Age Gap Love.

Any woman over a certain age who is online dating will definitely receive messages from guys in their 20’s at some point. While it might seem flattering I for one would have a problem dating someone who could have been at school with my kids, but maybe that’s just me. Imagine not being able to talk about all the things that happened in the 70’s as your current admirer wasn’t even born when you were either down at the disco with your skin tight lycra pants on and a sequin boob tube dancing around to Victor Sylvester, or wearing a black bin bag, held together by safety pins and doing the pogo dance to the Sex Pistols. Imagine dating someone who wasn’t born when Charles married Diana in the 80’s, when Duran Duran ruled the charts and you were embracing all the glamour of 80’s fashion thanks to the likes of Dynasty and Dallas.

“Try me” they all say, “I prefer older ladies.” But that’s the thing. I don’t want to be reminded every day of how old I am when a song comes on the radio and it reminds me of a long hot summer in 1976 and you remind me that you weren’t born then. Or when we go shopping and I laugh at how the latest fashion is really the 80’s reincarnated with a nod to rara skirts and a lurex thread running through a shirt, and you say yet again that you weren’t born then. At least we can talk about Madonna though, she’s been around for ever (or so it seems) and everyone has a favourite Madge single.

There is another type of man who prefers older ladies though. The type who preys on single older women who go on holiday in places like Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt. Then there’s the guys in Gambia who insist that they are leaders of a tribe/a prince/someone revered, even though they’re working as a pool boy in the hotel that these women are staying at. But some of these women love it. They’ve come out of bad marriages, older, looks have faded and they crave attention. Enter stage left a young, good looking guy who apparently is besotted with his latest love. Nothing to do with the fact that she has money, a house paid off, lonely, desperate, needing some attention to prove that she’s still attractive. and will do anything to keep him. Maybe after the holiday is over and she’s back home in grey drab England she might get a phone call asking when is she going over to see her new lover again as he’s missing her badly (he can’t visit her without a visa don’t forget) but in the meantime while he and his brothers are moving to bigger premises with the family business that they have, could she transfer some money over to help cover the rent? Of course, she says, even when it’s a second, third and all the rest of the times she is asked for money. This is the man who she loves, will do anything for, even though she admits herself she doesn’t know what he sees in her. Her family will try to make her see sense, her children will be concerned when she has to remortgage the house to help finance her new boyfriend and his family, and we’ll all get to read all about the wedding and the subsequent divorce when she finds out he only wanted her for a British visa. But I understand why these ladies do it.

Once you reach a certain age you feel as though you’re invisible. Women go on holiday and fall for unsuitable men but guys deal with it in a different way.They go to Thailand and spend money on young girls, but the difference is in Thailand everyone knows what the deal is, money changes hands and (hopefully) everyone is happy.